Denise

My name is Denise Newman – I run a vegan mail order company ethical WARES with my husband Mike.

We live on a small-holding in beautiful West Wales with our equally beautiful son Bryn (age 7) and 50 rescued animals.

I’ve been vegan for over 23 years now – and it’s never been easier! It’s not something I shout about, it’s just part of me, part of who I am.

Becoming a vegan was not from some light bulb moment, or incident. I had been vegetarian for many years, through a complete dislike of putting meat in my mouth. Then when I could shop for myself and make choices of what was in my food, I made that leap to full vegan. Animal rights and animal welfare had always been important to me, so it was good to make this final transition.

In the past I was heavily involved with the Essex Badger Group and then was a constant attendee at the protests against live animal exports in Brightlingsea, and other events in between.

Now living where we do, we cannot attend many such events, demonstrations etc, instead daily we care for our land, the rescue animals, and wildlife who live on it. In addition, when the hunt ‘turn up’ in our village, we have to ensure the hunt and hounds do not come on our land. The past few times the hunt has been around we have seen the fox being chased and will it to stop on our little safe Island until the hunt leaves.

Animal rights should also go hand in hand (or should that be paw in paw) with the struggle for human rights and respect for the world and for all its inhabitants.

One of the brilliant things about running ethical WARES is that every day we are in touch with compassionate people all over the world. You could easily think that everyone is turning vegan but of course that’s not the case and we’ve all got a lot of hard work to do to change the world. But change it we will.